The Book of the Small Lights

1:1 ¶ And a watcher was trained to seek the heavens; he kept a tower upon the hill, and knew the names of the stars and the hours of the night; and he had been taught that the great lights are the holy lights, and that the small are the earth's forgetfulness. And below his tower there burned a small lamp in a kitchen window, and the watcher saw it, and could not unsee it.

1:2 ¶ And he asked whose lamp it was; and the answer was plain: It is left for one who may be late; and the woman of that house hath lit it nightly for years, and the one it awaits hath come but seldom, and she lighteth it still. And the watcher asked, Why, if he cometh seldom? and she answered, Because the door is dark when no one lighteth it.

1:3 ¶ And the watcher said within himself, This is a small thing, and the heavens are vast, and I was not sent to watch kitchens. And he watched the heavens, and the heavens were patient with him, and the small lamp burned beneath all his watching like a star that had come down to the earth and was not ashamed.

2:1 ¶ And a woman set her table and left one place empty for the one who might come; and the loaf beside the empty place waited through the evening, and the chair was not taken away. And at the night's end she gave the loaf to a hungry neighbor, and entered it in no book, and the neighbor slept, and none knew the chain of it.

2:2 ¶ And a hand was wounded in the marketplace, and a stranger bound it with a strip of cloth; and the stranger was thanked by none, and asked thanks of none, and went his way into the crowd. And the watcher, beholding it, remembered the elder weighing: for it is written, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

2:3 ¶ And a child planted a seed in a cracked cup, and watered it daily, and gave it a name that none else knew; and the seed came up, and the child showed it to no one, and the showing was in the watering. And the book keepeth the small hope as it was kept: unnamed, in a cracked cup, upon a sill.

2:4 ¶ And the city praised its great lights: the lighthouse, the festival torch, the monument candle that burned by decree; and it taught that the great are the city's glory and the small are private and unworthy of the street. And the citizens believed it, and hid their own small acts, and the hiding was the city's quietest victory; for the small light is not hidden by being small, but by being covered.

3:1 ¶ And the watcher came down from his tower, and walked the streets at evening, and saw the small lights one by one: a bowl of water set out for the dogs of the quarter, a stair swept for a neighbor's coming, a coat lent and not reclaimed, a letter written to one whom all had forgotten. And he said, These are not the great works done small; these are the whole work, done always, and no column holdeth them.

3:2 ¶ And a door was repaired at midnight by a man who could not sleep; and the crying hinge was oiled and silent thereafter, and none knew who had done it, the man least of all. And it is written, He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

3:3 ¶ And a name was spoken correctly to a stranger who had grown used to being called by nothing; and the speaking restored him to himself in a single syllable, and the syllable was his own. And the namer did it in passing, and remembered it not by evening; and the stranger remembered it all his days, and told it to no one.

3:4 ¶ And the book confesseth: the acts do not earn grace, and they purchase nothing; they are not a price, and they are not a debt; they become the places where grace refuseth to be hidden. And the elder text asketh for the showing: shew me thy faith without thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my works; and the showing is a showing, and not a wage; for grace was never hidden from the world, but small, and we looked past it.

4:1 ¶ And the watcher returned to his tower and lit one small lamp in the window facing the road, for whoever might come up it in the dark. And the neighbors saw it and lit their own, and the quarter became a city of small lights: a hundred windows, a hundred unresisted deeds, a net of mercies that no audit findeth and no night putteth out.

4:2 ¶ And the promise standeth from the first lamp to the last, and the elder word is its whole warrant: whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. For the book keepeth no ledger of the small, and heaven keepeth one, and the two are not the same book.

4:3 ¶ And the charge of the book is small, and it is given to no office and to no order: light thou the lamp thou hast, in the room wherein thou standest, and ask no leave of the great; and if it be seen, let it be seen; and if it be hidden, let it be hidden; for the light was not lit for the watching, but the watching was taught by the light.

4:4 ¶ And the book endeth where the first lamp was lit: grace was never hidden from the world; it was small, and we looked past it; and the last lamp is left burning, and the last door stands dark no longer. And the acts do not purchase anything, and they are not nothing; they are where the hidden light consenteth to be seen. And the book saith no more of it, for the small lights are not the lesser lights, and the night is not their enemy, and the smallest of them outlasteth the monument.